Saturday, November 20, 2010

My 2010 Book List

Jan 7 - My Problem With Doors (Southard) My first professional audiobook, read for iPublish Press of Canada!
Jan 9 - Peter the Great - His Life and World (Massie) A magisterial history!
Jan 11 - British Battleships 1939-1945 II
Jan 25 - The Maze in the Mirror (Chalker)
Jan 28 - The Sixth Fleet - Seawolf (Meadows)
Feb 7 - Shadows of Steel (Brown)
Feb 9 - Beasts, Men and Gods (Ossendowski) read for LV
Feb 12 - Aftermath (Webster) An eye-opening book on what remains in the ground after the armies go by
Feb 16 - Phoenix Sub Zero (Demercurio)
Feb 21 - Piranha Firing point (Demercurio)
Feb 25 - Voyage of the Devilfish (Demercurio)
Mar 1 - William Tell Told Again (Wodehouse) for LV
Mar 13 - Galileo's Dream (Robinson) quite an inventive tale, with verifiable history too
Mar 18 - A Morbid Taste for Bones (Peters) My first introduction to the "Brother Cadfael" series
Mar 23 - A Corpse Too Many (Peters) a Cadfael book
Mar 25 - The River War (Churchill) For LV. Dry, but not bad as a history written by a great statesman
Mar 26 - The Devil's Novice (Peters) a Cadfael book
Apr 1 - Deadman's Ransom (Peters) a Cadfael book
Apr 4 - The Confession of Brother Haluin (Peters) a Cadfael book
Apr 8 - The Battle for Life (Dickens) For LV.
Apr 12 - Brother Cadfael's Penance (Peters) a Cadfael book
Apr 18 - The Hermit of Eynton Forest (Peters) a Cadfael book
Apr 27 - The Royal Book of Oz (Thompson) For LV. A canonical Oz book, the first not written by Baum
Apr 28 - Modern Warship Design & Development (Friedman) A serious text
Apr 30 - Conquest Over Time (M. Shaara) For LV
May 4 - The Heretic's Apprentice (Peters) a Cadfael book
May 11 - Warrior Class (Dale Brown)
Jun 4 - No Apology (Romney) The first book I've ever read by a politician; it was very good!
Jun 4 - Robinson Crusoe (DeFoe) For LV, the third of the great castaway stories I've read
Jun 12 - The Koran - A Very Short Introduction (Cook) Not short enough! I didn't learn what I'd hoped to, and was bored doing it
Jun 17 - This World is Taboo (Leinster) For LV. My 50th solo!
Jul 3 - Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung (Appleton II) for LV.
Jul 21 - Creative Photoshop Landscape Techniques (Meehan) A pretty complete compendium, nicely illustrated.
Jul 23 - Words On Tape (Byers) Supposedly a good text on producing audio works for profit. Very dated now.
Jul 29 - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Doyle) for LV
Jul 31 - Air Combat Reader (Boyne & Handleman)
Aug 11 - The Fall of Hyperion (Simmons) A difficult book. I read Hyperion last year, and too much time elapsed in between.
Aug 26 - The Kama Sutra (Vatsyayana) for LV. This has an enduring reputation as a sex manual, but it's a taxonomy of behaviors, arranged as lists.
Sep 2 - Dreadnought (Massie) A long, complicated history, giving a good look at historical persons 1895-1915 or so, but hindered by repeatedly following one narrative and then backing up in time to start another.
Sep 7 - The White Feather (Wodehouse) for LV. Not so funny as your usual Wodehouse.
Sep 21 - A Lion Among Men (Maguire) The story of the Cowardly Lion.
Sep 29 - White Fang (London) for LV. Dog's-eye view of growing up as a wolf.
Oct 4 - Forty Rules of Love (Shaflak) An engaging historical novel of a Sufi mystic, by a Middle-Eastern author.
Oct 9 - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Rowling) I know, I know! I fell behind the series!
Oct 15 - The Call of the Wild (London) for LV. The flip side to White Fang, a gently-raised dog gets shipped to the Yukon.
Oct 25- Pirate Latitudes (Crichton) Really off-beat for Crichton, but fun. Assembled after his death.
Oct 26 - Time's Eye (A. Clarke & S. Baxter) Can't recommend. Disappointing book from two sci-fi greats.
Nov 1 - Patton's Panthers (Sasser) A really engaging narrative of a black tank unit in WWII. It will rouse your indignation for the treatment the black soldiers endured.
Nov 3 - Spy Hook (Deighton) Picks up from his Game-Set-Match trio.
Nov 11 - The Cobra Event (Preston) An acclaimed novel of bio-terrorism... but I found the writing quality really substandard.
Nov 15 - The Defiant Agents (Norton) A Time Agent novel from well-known sci-fi author Andre Norton.  Recorded for Audio Books by Mike Vendetti, soon to be available on Audible.com!  My second pro production!
Nov 19 - Killing Rommel (Pressfield) A WWII historical novel that I found especially gripping for its scenes of survival in the North African deserts. One of the absolute best books I've read in a long time!
With this book, I've attained 52 books read for the year. Finally, the elusive one-a-week accomplished! And almost a month and a half left in the year! Yay!
Nov 26 - Design Ideas for Curb Appeal (Connolly) Nicely illustrated
Dec 7 - The Virtues of War (Pressfield) Curious that I finished a book of this title on Pearl Harbor Day!  Like Pressfield's other book above, this was excellent!  They are #1 & #2 best books for 2010... but I can't decide which is which!
Dec 12 - Tyrannosaur Canyon (Preston) This was a fun read.
Dec 28 - Antietam (Reasoner) Absolute WORST book I read this year. He wrote a multi-book series; this is #3 in it. I will read nothing else by him. He knows nothing of the Civil War except dates.
Dec 30 - The Digital Photography Book, vol 3 (Kelby) Looks very handy if you have a DSLR and a studio; I don't.
 

 That's the list for 2010 - 57 books completed!